The Nintendo Switch Still Has Three Guaranteed Silver Bullets To Come

As we head deeper into 2018, it’s hard to picture how Nintendo can possibly keep up the insane momentum it had in 2017, releasing not only the Switch, but also two all-time great games for the Switch in the form of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey.

A full Zelda game and a full Mario game are usually going to be two of the biggest titles of a generation for any Nintendo system, but for the Switch specifically to have them both be this good and in year one is something of an unusual situation. It briefly had me worried about Nintendo front-loading its offerings, but I still think there is a lot to look forward to here.

Specifically, Nintendo has three silver bullets left to be released for the Switch that will almost assuredly be great and at the very least, sell a ton of copies. Nintendo has not announced two of these, but these games will arrive at some point, albeit perhaps not this year.

Mario Kart 8Nintendo

Mario Kart 9

This one may end up being the furthest out of any of them because we’ve already seen the release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch in its first year. But with that said, it’s obvious that the Switch will get its own dedicated Mario Kart title down the line.

Mario Kart games are some of Nintendo’s biggest sellers with the highest system attach rates due to their reliance on being the go-to multiplayer title for most Nintendo owners of all ages. Mario Kart Wii (Mario Kart 6), for instance, is the sixth best-selling video game ever made with 37 million units sold, with the only two Nintendo games outselling it being the bundled Wii Sports and the original NES Super Mario Bros.

Add in the Switch’s mobility (Mario Kart portable games also sell extremely well) and you have a recipe for another monster hit for Nintendo in the next few years, guaranteed. Though it may be a ways off yet.

Super Smash Bros. Wii UNintendo

Super Smash Bros. Switch

Super Smash Bros. isn’t quite the sales behemoth you think it is, as no individual game lands on a list of the 50 best-selling games ever made, but with 45+ million copies sold total, and a game on every Nintendo system since N64, this is another inevitable hit for the Switch on the horizon.

Unlike Mario Kart, Nintendo has not remastered or re-released Super Smash Bros. Wii U for the Switch, meaning that perhaps a new Smash is closer than we think. Nintendo has kept expanding the game’s roster for ages, and it seems very clear that we’ll be seeing a lot of new characters this time around from franchises like Splatoon or ARMS (I swear ARMS was just a vehicle to create new Smash Bros. characters).

Again, portability will make this version better than ever, as there will not need to be separate versions across handheld and home console this time around, and with the Switch’s sales momentum, it could end up being one of the biggest Smash games in series history, in theory. Hopefully we hear something from Nintendo about this soon.

Pokemon Ultra SunNintendo

Pokémon Switch

This is it. This is the enormous meteor heading straight toward earth that will arrive with an impact like nothing else before it.

The Pokémon series is Nintendo’s crowning achievement, as between the traditional handheld games and now Pokémon GO, no other franchise has its level of global reach. But the series has always been kept off console, relegated to side-projects like Stadium or Snap. That’s about to change, now that Nintendo has finally merged its home console and handheld devices. They’ve already announced that the next generation of Pokémon, Gen 8, is being developed specifically for Switch.

It’s hard to understand just how massive this is going to be. A Pokémon game that is not only being developed specifically for a home console, but also there is no handheld-only version to compete with it either, because the home console is the handheld. Pokémon games are always destined to sell well, but the Switch version, Sky and Earth, Dawn and Dusk, Alpha and Omega, whatever it ends up being, is going to be something else entirely. I don’t know if it will set sales records because well, there are less Switches in the wild right now than there were DSs or 3DSs, but over time? It’s certainly possible, depending on continued adoption of the console and the quality of the game. In the end, I think Pokémon on Switch will prove to be a bigger hit than anything else on the console.

Those are just the main three. Clearly any great Nintendo game has the potential to sell well, and Metroid Prime 4 is an announced title that certainly many are excited about already. But future DK, Kirby, Yoshi, Star Fox, etc. games could also be smash hits for Nintendo. These are just the three that I think are automatic guarantees to both exist, and sell like crazy.